Staging Shakespeare's Plays: a Choice of Theatres

Abstract

The received wisdom has long been that Shakespeare's plays are best seen in theatres that resemble his own – and the assumption is usually that these should aim to simulate the actor–audience relationship of the Globe, with its galleries and thrust stage. Yet, as John Russell Brown argues here, that playhouse, fashioned hastily from the timbers of the Theatre, was becoming old-fashioned when it was constructed, and ‘Shakespeare's theatre’ – already also the halls of city companies and the court – was soon to become the Blackfriars, with its much lower capacity and end-on stage. These elements, he argues, with their more direct and intimate visual relationship with audiences, enabled spectators to pick up clues in the writing that are lost on a larger, three-sided stage. The most recent of John Russell Brown's many books are Shakespeare Dancing (Palgrave, 2005) and, as editor, The Routledge Companion to Directors' Shakespeare (2008). In 2007 he was appointed Visiting Professor at University College London.